Throwback Thursday - Ditch Lights on CN?

CN HR616 number 2111 is heading a westbound freight past the London Via station on March 11, 1988.

By Peter Mumby.

In last week's post I made a brief reference to ditch lights being in use on CP during the late 1980s.  This got me wondering about how CN was applying ditch lights to their motive power in the same general era.

By the 1980s CN had actually been making use of ditch lights for many years, although this application was restricted to the mountainous regions of Alberta and British Columbia.  Furthermore, these ditch lights were portable, and were plugged onto locomotives as they headed into the mountains, then removed as trains left Edmonton on their way east again.  CN HR616 number 2111, featured in today's photo, was one of 20 MF-32a class locomotives built in 1982, and it is apparent that these units were not equipped with ditch lights as-built.  CN re-manufactured a group of GP9 locomotives in the 4000 series during 1981-84, and these came without the lights.  Units 4100-4116 of 1984 similarly lacked ditch lights, although by 1987 they were being retrofitted.  Later units in this series, 4117-4143, rebuilt in 1989-1991, all came out of the shop equipped with the appliances.  The 5400-series SD50F locomotives, built by GMD from 1985 to 1987, were also fully equipped upon delivery.  1985, then, would appear to be a watershed year as far as ditch light application was concerned.

Locomotive 2111, as shown above, was photographed on March 11, 1988.  I have photos of other units of this class dating to 1992 which show that ditch lights had been installed by then, so presumably the process of retrofitting these appliances to the existing fleet was spread out over a few years.  As for the modeller, then, it seems as if the 1985-1990 era would allow for a bit of variety as far as running locomotives with or without ditch lights was concerned.